Argentina - 

Barbara Arcuschin’s travel to Northwest Argentina was manifold and inspiring. She documented her way through Argentina’s Jujuy province- a land of beauty, color, serenity and kindness. Barbara shared with Emaho this experience of hers in words and photographs.

Barbara Arcuschin’s journey to northern Argentina was, initially, a decision based on a fairly natural inquisitiveness to know the North of one’s own country. She starts off by remarking, “It certainly was an interesting travel.”

The Jujuy Province is located in the extreme northwest of Argentina and shares its borders with Chile and Bolivia. Describing her travel across the Jujuy Province she says, “Jujuy Province is composed of four distinct regions with each having its unique attractions – from the vast salt flats of the Puna Desert to the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a World Heritage Site, and towns like Tilcara, Purmamarca and Humahuaca, where the past is preserved almost intact, and pre-Columbian art is present in its entirety; and from the lush vegetation and crystal clear rivers of the Valleys to the incredible high jungle of the Yungas, a stretch of forest along the Andes Mountains from Peru, Bolivia and northern Argentina. Experiencing all these places left me inspired and renewed.”

© Barbara Arcuschin

Barbara reminiscences about the beauty of the region, explaining the strong colours of the land from the darkest of browns to the most orange, the vast open sky and the radiating golden sun. She adds that the colorful outfits of the locals seem to make the land acquire each shade of the rainbow.

Passing through Purmamarca, also known as the desert city, left an impression on Barbara that the place was desolate, almost untouched, except for the few who pass through it. From there on, Barbara went to Tilcara, famous for its dramatic mountainous landscapes and trekked through San Isidro de Iruya. Climbing mountains, crossing rivers, Barbara got an opportunity to engage with the locals and also experience their rich food and warm hospitality. Commenting on what she observed about the locals, Barbara says ” People have a particular look there. Women always wear a hat on their head, with hair tied in long braids. The men and women wear brightly colored accessories. The people are humble and hardworking. They use their natural resources to sell their own merchandise. They are usually very polite and will greet you even if they don’t know you.”

© Barbara Arcuschin

The highlight of Barbara’s journey to the northwest Argentina, however, was being in La Quiaca, a small city in the Jujuy Province, which shares its borders with Villazon- a town in Bolivia. Just walk down a tunnel and you enter another world of noisy traders, local crafts and much more. It’s a sudden transition from the quiet and calm setting of Argentina to the noisy and bustling markets of Bolivia.

This journey of Barbara ended with the realization of the things that are indispensable for living, about time and about showing kindness to people. She says that she’s more appreciative of relationships, nature, the little things in life, as also the colorful things in life!

Written by – Saraswati Banerjee

Photo Credit – Barbara Arcuschin

U.S.A. - 

American artist Ernie Button finds the human element in deserted places.  His photographs capture a sense of nostalgia for times past and reveal how time renders certain things useless.  Emaho caught up with this extensive traveler and story teller to find out more about his subjects.

What got you interested in shooting medium format photography?

I’ve taken pictures and been interested in photography since my teenage years. But until my wife went to grad school to get her MFA in fine art painting, I really didn’t know that there was this whole world devoted to the making and creation, as well as exhibition of art. The art world fascinated me and I wanted to be a part of it, even in a very small way. I took some classes at a local community college to give me a foundation in the basics of photography. After that, I was off and running.

Buckets and Bird

Your cereal landscapes are both humorous and intriguing in the way they redefine the viewer’s sense of space.  Why chose cereal as a subject?

Art is usually shaped by a person’s life experiences and I am no different. I grew up in the 1970’s and when I was a youngster, cereal was a luxury item. A brand name cereal was a rarity in our house as they were consistently more expensive. Something like King Vitamin, a popular 70’s cereal, or Cap’n Crunch made for pure breakfast heaven as a child. On a trip to the grocery store when I was an adult, I saw a box of King Vitamin next to a new version of Cap’n Crunch, Choco Donuts. Looking at the rest of the cereal aisle, it became very clear that breakfast cereal had changed from nutrition to entertainment.

It was a project that evolved naturally for me, starting with just a few experimental portraits of cereal leading to the building of the more complex constructed landscape dioramas.  From a photography perspective, cereal was a visual cornucopia of vibrantly colored marshmallows that resemble people and objects and characters from movies, as if they were calling out to have their portraits taken, to be the center of attention. However, on the other side of the aisle sits the more ‘adult’ cereals (i.e. fiber, bran). Having lived in Arizona for over 35 years, those cereals upon close inspection resemble some of the shapes and colors and textures of the southwestern desert. I began to construct landscapes that would utilize the natural earth tones of certain cereals. I placed enlarged photographs of actual Arizona skies in the background of the cereal landscapes giving the final image an odd sense of reality. It is apparent that cereal is not just for breakfast anymore. Cereal has evolved into pop culture objects instead of just nutritious corn pops.

Dale

Many of your images do not have people in them, yet they don’t feel like empty or abandoned spaces.  Rather, there’s a figurative element to the inanimate objects, buildings, and landscapes in your work.  Do you feel your subjects have charisma, even without necessarily being humans?

Besides just pure, untouched nature, everything else that we encounter has a touch or influence of mankind.  So even though I am not taking direct images of people, I am taking what they have left behind, how they have impacted or influenced an environment.

Fire Cat

Is there a narrative element to your work?

There is a narrative quality to some of my work in that I am trying to visually support a particular theory or artist’s statement of mine.  For example, the portfolio Back and Forth was trying to visually tell the story of how the coin-operated grocery store ride was disappearing from the urban landscape which happened to coincide with the economic collapse in the late 2000’s.  But a lot of my travel photography is more objective in that I’m trying to visually arrange the elements in the frame to make a well-composed, visually interesting, thought provoking image.

Mushroom Ride

Many of your photos have vignettes, giving off a sense of nostalgia or memory.  Does time play a role in your work?

Yes, several of my portfolios only occurred because of the recognition that time has passed and changed the meaning to me or changed the physical structure of the object.  With Back and Forth, it was the fond recollection of these rides from when I was a child.  When the rides started to disappear, I felt that I needed to document that.  With Cerealism, it was a cereal that I grew up with, King Vitamin from the 1970’s that I recognized on a trip to the grocery store that got me looking around at the cereal aisle. Portraits in Plastic are portraits of the actual toys that I grew up with.

Clearing the Land was the documentation of “progress”, the clearing of these beautiful old palm trees to make way for new houses.  However, the housing market bubble burst and the palm trees were gone; there were no houses to be built leaving these flat, unattractive patches of dirt.

Rooster

There is such richness in your art work when you are shooting across the world.  What do you find is different about photography while travelling than working on subjects at home?

My photography has developed a consistency or a style i.e. there are subject matters that I tend to consistently photograph as well as how I frame up a photograph.  But traveling gives me the exposure to new environments and subject matter.  I live in Arizona where there is wonderful light and landscape throughout the state.  It’s a beautiful state in large part due to its diverse landscape, from the Grand Canyon to the Red Rocks of Sedona to the Sonoran Desert. Some of photography’s greats have spent time photographing Arizona, including Ansel Adams and Mark Klett. A magazine like Arizona Highways does an excellent job of introducing someone to this landscape.  But being exposed to new environments and culture pushes my photography out of its comfort zone.  My travels to China are a perfect example of getting out of that comfort zone, ultimately improving my photography.

Say Hey Cats

Could you share a memorable story about any of the places you’ve captured?

In 2009, I was invited to exhibit work from Cerealism at the Lishui International Photography Festival in Lishui, China.  The people were welcoming, generous and seemed to truly appreciate that I had come to share my photography at the festival.  After attending the festival’s opening ceremonies and the multiple exhibits around the city, I had an opportunity to explore.  Armed with my Holga cameras, I set off to explore the city of Lishui and the surrounding landscape.

Ultraman 2012

During a previous photographic series, Back and Forth, I postulated that the coin-operated ride was disappearing from the urban landscape in the States, specifically Phoenix, Arizona where I live.  What I found here in Lishui was just the opposite; a plethora of coin-operated kiddie rides dotting the urban landscape.  The rides were flourishing, lining most of the streets that I ventured down.  I’ve seen a fair amount of China and in my travels, I have seen a few rides in various Chinese cities, but nothing like what I saw in Lishui.  I would openly (and jokingly) wonder if they were all being shipped from the USA right into Lishui, except that is obvious that the rides are constructed of very different character and animals than what I’ve seen in the US.

I returned to Lishui in 2012 with the intent of taking more images of the coin-operated rides.  Thankfully, many rides remained allowing me further opportunities to document them.  What became evident, the more miles I logged walking around the city, is that the rides were a disconnected calling card for the micro-businesses that appeared behind the roll-up garage doors that were their storefronts.  However, just like in the United States, I rarely saw anyone on the rides; they become more of an entertaining fixture of the storefront.  I’m not sure what, if anything, the large number of coin-operated rides is saying about the city of Lishui, or what it says about our society vs. theirs, but it was such a pleasant surprise seeing them after having spent the past decade documenting their disappearance from America’s urban landscape.

Up and Down Duck

Interviewed by Hilary Devaney
Photographs by Ernie Button

Bangladesh - 

It was in the afternoon, I was sitting on my grandpa’s couch. The door was slightly open and I saw light coming through, washed out between the white door and white walls.

John and Prova, my grandparents. They always loved the fact that I take pictures of them, because then I spend more time with them and they don’t feel lonely anymore. After Prova passed away, I try to visit more so John can talk. He tells me so many things about their early life, and how they met. There are so many stories.

Here, life is silent, suspended. Everything is on a wait. A wait for something that I don’t completely understand.

Written and photographed by Sarker Protick

Australia - 

With our growing dependency on genetic manipulation and bioengineering we might be hesitant to ask when is it too much?  Australian artist Patricia Piccinini walks this fine line with her unsettling hyper-realistic sculptures.  From sci-fi to mythology, Piccinini talks about her world of creatures and her role as benevolent creator.

You weren’t always a sculptor, though your hyper-realistic sculptures are some of your most famous work.  What drew you to working three-dimensionally?

In the mid-1990s, when I left art school, I was primarily working in painting and drawing, but I was very dissatisfied with the way the paintings communicated the ideas I was interested in discussing. There seemed to be a disconnect between the medium and the content. So while I continued to draw, I also started to work with photography. Once I had started with that I realized that I didn’t need to be constrained by the limits of my own skills, so long as I could work with people. My photography had often included creatures that I incorporated digitally, and I started to think that it might be interesting try to bring them to life three dimensionally. I really like the emotional immediacy that hyper-real figuration gives the work. However, it still always starts with drawing. I feel that my drawing is actually the core of my practice, where I develop ideas before making a decision about how they should end up as objects.

Litters

Your work is cohesive because it seems to revolve around a central theme –which I take to be the intersection between technology and the natural world.  Has your idea evolved over the years?

I think so. When I look back at early works I often feel very conflicted. On the one hand I’m surprised at how close they are conceptually to what I still do, but on the other they seem a bit naive. Which is okay I guess as dissatisfaction with your own work is often what drives you to try to make it better. Anyway, in thinking about the evolution of my ideas over time, what strikes me is that the focus has shifted from the ‘political’ to the ‘personal’ in many respects. In my early work I was much more interested in the media and biotechnology companies and the like, from the point of view of social implications for example. In my recent work, my interest is more in the emotional context, in empathy and the relationships between the creatures and viewer on that level. I am also now more interested in the natural world than in biotechnology, and I see my world as more mythical or dreamlike than sci-fi.

Doubting Thomas

Many of your monstrous creatures are paired with human sculptures, especially children.  What effect do you intend to create with this unsettling dichotomy?

For one thing, children directly express the idea of genetics – both natural and artificial – but beyond that they also imply the responsibilities that a creator has to their creations.  The innocence and vulnerability of children is powerfully emotive and evokes empathy – their presence softens the hardness of some of the more difficult ideas. The children in my works are young enough to accept the strangeness and difference of my world without difficulty, and they hint at the speed at which the extraordinary becomes commonplace in contemporary society. For me, the clear emotional bonds that connect the children and the creatures in my work are simultaneously optimistic and disturbing. Their closeness is both moving and unsettling.

Long Awaited

Do you see your creatures as sending a warning to us about the unintended effects of how we engineer nature?

I don’t really see my work in such definite terms. For a start I don’t think we can think in those terms. It’s like rabbits. Who doesn’t like a cute little bunny rabbit? Yet in Australia they are a massive environmental problem, a real threat to native landscapes and animal populations. The problem is not bunnies per se; it is what we have done with them. In their place they are wonderful. I don’t feel these questions have simple answers, or that I am the one who should attempt to answer them. What I am interested in is getting people to have the discussions, but in a way that doesn’t allow an easy good/bad type answer. This is a process that we will need to negotiate at every turn.

The Coup

You wrote in your artist’s statement for In Another Life that “there is no question as to whether there will be undesired outcomes; my interest is in whether we will be able to love them.”  Would you describe your creatures as loveable?

Absolutely! One thing I am absolutely sure of is that I am a huge fan of diversity, and that I have enormous affection for every creature I’ve ever created. I’m not saying that I think that they’re perfect or an improvement on nature but I think they have a certain beauty. I am very interested in the creator’s responsibility towards what they create. I guess I do understand some people’s reactions to them, but in a way I am always challenging those people to see what I see in those creatures. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a very important book for me. As I see it, it is not so much a parable about hubris but about parenting. The tragedy stems from Frankenstein’s disappointment with his creation and his refusal to nurture it.

The Carrier

There is a certain drama in your gallery installation at Arter in Istanbul in that your creatures envelop the space.  Is it your desire to have people see your work in a setting that becomes its own world, rather than each piece in isolation?

Certainly. I see all of my works as coming from the same place. It is a sort of parallel world that is very similar to ours but not quite the same. While some works have closer connections than others, I don’t think any of them are mutually exclusive. This is often difficult for viewers who are conditioned to group works and therefore try to separate my silicone sculptures from my fiberglass ones. I was really happy with the installation at Arter because the space and installation allowed me to really make that point and create that other world that isn’t just more artwork in an art gallery.

Interviewed by Hilary Devaney

Art Works by Patricia Piccinini

U.S.A. - 

With freight train jumping and hitch-hiking as his method, a camera as his tool and a desire to explore beyond the boundaries of his home town as his impetus, Mike Brodie has spent much of his adult life criss-crossing the veins of America’s long-haul passages. His unique photographic catalogue captures a rare angle of community and country that embodies elements of magnetic anti-establishment and punk rock idealism. It depicts an alternative lifestyle of transient yet soulful interactions, of wind-tossed hair and weather worn clothes, mingled with moments of clarity between the unknown. The result is that an existence housed in long, illegal escapades and unconventional voyages via freight and carriage, with scarce food and hygienic dissonance suddenly shines with an alluring, adventurous and seductively glamorous freedom: “So long as you like the outdoors life and you don’t mind getting dirty and not having a change of clothes for months”. His desire for spontaneity and freedom combined with a fervent locomotive obsession has seen Brodie ride magnanimously for years in a clandestine cosmos of movement.

© Mike Brodie

Brodie’s unorthodox journey began over 9 years ago when he hopped on his first train near his home in Pensacola, FL in 2004. From then on he became part of a tight knit and transient community of travellers and run-aways and was able to document his movements with a Polaroid SX-70 that he found on the back seat of a friend’s car. With few means of subsistence and no formal photographic training, Brodie exhibits a natural talent for depicting the intimate and cherished moments around him. From 2006-2009, Brodie switched to using 35mm film where he was able to capture a multiplicity of occasions spanning 50,000 miles and 46 states. “I know almost everyone I shoot,” Brodie says of his portraits, “three of the women in the book are ex-girlfriends and a couple of the guys… are best friends”

© Mike Brodie

According to Brodie “going off on an adventure across the country like Huck Finn is a very American thing to do,” so, bored with “bagging groceries” part-time in between school, and determined to follow his own words, he set off on a three-day journey to Jacksonville. This journey that would set the scene for a much larger adventure until he decided to settle in 2008. Brodie, like many of the others he encountered a long the way felt as though the transient lifestyle was a teenage right of passage. “A lot of the kids have gone back to their old lives… Some were running away, some were out for adventure. It’s like being homeless by choice, I guess, but living like that you learn a lot of American values like self-reliance, independence.”

© Mike Brodie

Through venturing across ever-changing landscapes, the artist who, due to his original choice of medium goes under the moniker ‘The Polaroid Kidd”, managed to construct an anecdotal, print narrative of a surreptitious life juxtaposed against the cautious and impervious traditional living of the American dream. It was his version of the American dream. However Brodie chooses not to connect with such vocational titles. “In my heart I do not feel like a photographer. I don’t know if I ever have.” Rather, his illustrative tableau that captures delicate pauses of rest, intimate tales of comradery, solitude, fragility, filthy-fellowship and lives forever foraging for the next opportune adventure has been spurred on by an insatiable lust for experiences and a rapacious desire to become acquainted with existence.

Perhaps the in depth intimacy projected by Brodie’s portraits comes from the close kinship he developed with the people involved. When asked “Who are the people in your photographs?”, Brodie responds with “Corey, Blake, Shannon, Henry, Patrick, Rocket, Soup, Lulu, Brandy, Vanessa, Savannah, Harrison, Alexis, Oliver, Lost, Trinity, etc.”. He often alludes to his ‘tight circle’ as family –“Even if the family lived 3,0000 miles away, you keep tabs on where they’re going and why. The difference is these families travel a lot.”

There is a story, detail or relationship behind every photo. “Me and my girlfriend got off a train in Maryland and hadn’t showered in five days so we got a Super 8 Motel and she washed her pants in the bathtub. That’s why the water was so dirty: train grease” . © Mike Brodie

Brodie was first recognised in 2008 when unbeknownst to him, his work was submitted and received the Baum Award for ‘Emerging American Photographer’. This lead to a growing awareness of his work; however, Brodie remained unbothered by growing expectations and, still unwilling to connect with the definitional pigeon-hole of being an ‘artist’, he changed route again. Instead of capitalizing on his impressive fame and online notoriety, Brodie chose to broaden his locomotive knowledge and recently graduated from the Nashville Auto-Diesel College (NADC). “Lately, I’ve been spending my days working on people’s cars, you get really close to people working on their cars, cars are so important to people and so many things happen in them or around or with them. I should be photographing it.”

© Mike Brodie

Now, 9 years down the road, Brodie’s highly anticipated second solo exhibition is coming to a close in time with the recent release of his first book. A Period of Juvenile Prosperity by M+B exhibits 30 new colour photographs and opened in conjunction with the publication of Brodie’s monograph bearing the same name, published by Twin Palms. The exhibition is Brodie’s first solo exhibition in 6 years. His permanent collections in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Berkeley Museum have been likened to that of artists Robert Frank and William Eggleston.

With fame and acclaim swelling around him, Brodie has retreated into obscurity yet continues his locomotive obsession as a mobile mechanic in his silver ’93 Dodge Ram truck. Perhaps, it is the ultimate parody that a man who declines to align himself with an artistic tag has now published a book about the subversive subculture of America. One thing is clear though – Brodie is extremely passionate about capturing the raw reality of his movements within an exquisitely unruly community.

© Mike Brodie

Written by Stephanie Cardy

A Period of Juvenile Prosperity courtesy Twin Palms Publishers

Japan - 

In an attempt to find new ways of communicating a story, Kosuke has recently produced the first issue of his self-published magazine Contact. Contact is a compilation of his contact sheets from any one photo-series, put together for the audience to gain more information about his story-making process, and experience, as a photographer. In a candid interview with EMAHO, Kosuke tells us more about Contact, its genesis and the current issue.

Tell us a little bit about Contact.

The idea came from organizing my negatives, my contact sheets and, of course, my room. I was looking at the contact sheets and I thought to myself: I published these stories, once or twice in magazines, online, and  exhibitions. Then I felt, of course exhibitions are nice, posting in magazines is also nice but, basically, as time passes, the magazine will get old and no longer available. I have a website for showing the work but I wanted something that was more tangible.

Why contact sheets?

These tightly edited pictures, it’s the strongest way to tell a story but, at the same time, I wanted to give a little bit more information about the story, what came before and what after. It’s not just about showing the strongest picture. This way the audience can see how I think, follow the movement of my journey. They can actually travel with me.

Have you included all the contact sheets of this specific project or have you edited those contact sheets?

I edited those contact sheets but it also depends on the contact sheet. In some contact sheets there are no images, which is actually quite interesting. When I shoot one lot of film I pick only the quality pictures, so it’s best I pick contact sheets in which I also pick some photos for my stories. Always and foremost, the idea of a photo story for me is like guiding the audience to the story, to the story I experienced. Like when I was shooting I experienced something, I saw something but if I could just take it to people with me, that’s my idea of sharing a story.

What’s goes into process of making this?

I choose which contact sheets I want to put in the publication, then make photocopies of those contacts sheets at Sevel-Eleven. I buy a 100 yen (1 US dollar) notebook, and then I just put the contact sheets on the pages. On some pages I want to show some images in bigger size…I drew design and layout by pencil and then paste the contact sheet in the notbook, The dummy is finally done.

What were the difficulties you faced in the whole process?

Actually not much.

Really.

No …you know it was kind of very smooth.

Did you take help from other people or was it your idea and you just executed it on your own?

This was my idea. Actually when I made a dummy I showed it to my friends and I said, ‘Hey what do you think, do you think this is interesting?’ and friends said, ‘Oh yeah, yeah this is nice, just do it.’ I am sorry it’s not a very well thought out process but something came up to my mind and I just did it. I felt it’s actually not a bad way to publish my stories, to show it around, to let more people see it.

I get your point but these days there has been a lot of debate on self-publishing of photo books, so are you saying this could also become a new trend—that of self-publishing your own work in a magazine format?

I don’t know if it’s going to be a trend but I felt I wanted to do something interesting by myself. Let’s say, there are things you have to consider, like budget and how you distribute etc…but at the same time there is this freedom to tell your story that you shot….

And then there are stories that I shoot but which, for example, are not bold enough or there are not enough pictures to make a real life big thick book right? Also, sometimes a small story that I shoot, which is not going to be a book in itself. If you publish it somewhere then its like done, and in an exhibition it might stay one or two months at most, that’s good, but at the same time it doesn’t stay, right?

So you wanted to create something that stays for longer…

Yeah…..I am not too sure if this magazine format can stay long time but I’m sure that compared to weekly magazines,  this certainly does…Though even if I sell everything it’s only going to reach 500 people… that is not many people.

So will it always be 500 or if it gets really popular will you be willing to increase the number?

Yes, sure, though only if I can recover the printing costs. For me  500 is a good number.

If it becomes really popular—I have been noticing that a lot of people have been very enthusiastic about it; you have been getting a lot of support from your friends and the fraternity—will it only be your work in future or you will also give a chance to other photographers, whose work can be published in Contact?

I am not very sure if other people want to do it.

Have you thought about this?

Wow, I am not sure because…. yeah I mean if everything is like a perfect situation then why not? For now I am just publishing by myself. This is an experiment and I am just trying to cover the cost of the printing because I want to do something interesting. But maybe, lets say I do CONTACT #1 and I do CONTACT #2, it might be the same design, might not be same design, anything’s possible.

Might be your work, might not be your work, is there a possibility?

I mean for now I don’t think so but if the condition allows then yes. Maybe some interesting people say they want to do it, why not. I don’t know if I have enough budgets to publish other people’s work though…

You have emphasized on telling a story with this format. How is it different from other magazines?

What you mean by this format?

Well, the emphasis on telling your own stories—that is the aim of photography, right? So how is it different when other photographers want to share their stories and their work gets published in other magazines and publications? So how is Contact different from that?

Magazine has many kinds of articles, and your picture is a part of the magazine. I think it is still very effective way to spread your story to the broader audience. Whereas CONTACT is just one story by itself; I am not putting it next to other stories, I am trying to tell just one story. From the beginning to the end, it’s just one story and I think the difference is that.

I am not sure that many of us, most of us photographers when you edit, let’s say, a portfolio with your story, people say you have to make it very tight, but at the same time, you would have been hiding some your successful pictures that cannot fit in the tight edit…and how the edit works differ from how you want to show. If it’s slideshow, exhibition or magazine or book etc…

In any medium what I want to do  is to guide the audience into the story. And make them experience my journey, the people I met; it’s like introducing all those people to the audience. Also, for this I felt it is also good to show not just the best pictures, I pick the picture that I think is best but at same time they see more, they see the process of my story. Things like: what I saw next to these pictures, next to that moment, another scene, more pictures, other people, other scenes, how my actual vision moves.  This is an attempt to seek another way to share the story if I share the process of making stories.

Why did you select your story ‘Any given Day’ for your first publication with Contact?

I felt the process was extremely interesting.

Why Colombia, why ‘Any Given Day’, because you have produced other stories also…

Yes, I was also thinking that maybe I’d do my story on China but Colombia it was in the end.

Tell me why Colombia. What’s the connection between Contact’s first edition and Colombia?

Kosuke: I have to say, the Colombia story, ‘Any given Day’–this one was, for me, one of the most successful stories that I have produced. I was constantly advancing with what I wanted to shoot; the whole vision was somehow very smooth. Of course, there were some difficulties along the way.

The China story is also one of the successful stories that I have done photographically. But then, these two were actually very different and opposite stories because when you see the contact sheet for Colombia, especially this story, you feel that somehow it’s very noisy. It’s like things are happening even in a calm situation, you can actually see the noise emerging from it.

These stories are polar opposites. Not because of the way I shot them, but mainly because of the story. Colombia is loud, kind of noisy—you can sense the vibrations but China is very calm. so I wanted to see how they look like if I make CONTACT book.

Let me show you the dummy. This here is a 100yen (1 US dollar) notebook.

(While showing the magazine) And this is the text…I also made a photocopy of my China story.

When was Colombia?

2010. While ‘Vanishing’ is 2007. It’s very different from Colombia.

I actually like this one.

China is calm while Colombia is loud.

And violent too…Can you share any one experience when you were working on Columbia on ‘Any given day’, any one experience that was interesting for you personally.

For me personally?

Yes, and if you could also just talk about that photograph also.

Okay, let me see. I have always liked this picture.

I have seen this picture. This is also on your website. If you could share the story behind that image and why is it so special for you?

This is a picture of mother of Goldo who is one of the gangsters. I met him because I visited his house. I began to go there even when this gangster was not there. I somehow became very close to his mother and his sister. His parents are very caring people. I spoke to her about her son, his life, when he is sick. She is very caring. But she also accepts the kind of situation the kids grew up in. She’d say: ‘It’s going to remain like this; I know what’s he doing but I can’t really do much’. She has accepted the situation for what it is. She raised her kids with care and love. And now her son is a gangster, he is also a hit man. Of course, she is worries for him. It’s her son and she is worried that her son will be killed one day for what he has done.

I don’t think it’s really a good thing to let them be like this, because this not a very happy situation. But people are living in that situation; they somehow accept it, let’s say they live one day at a time. This is where the title of this series– ‘Any given Day’—comes from. And of course their life continues, while you have your plan, your schedule ahead, but the way of life here is – a day and another day and another day. I mean they have a schedule, like ‘next week I have to do this’, but the mentality of the kind of life they lead is one day, then another. The whole story is like as I describe in the title.

What I do in China or Colombia is to put myself in one particular situation, in this case in this town.

After Colombia, China and Fukushima, what do you have in mind, because this has now become a publication and requires continuation. Will there be a point when your projects will come to an end? What next then? So if one edition is Columbia, another China, the third could be Fukushima, but what after the tenth edition?

After the tenth edition? That is a difficult question. Let’s see, I have this one now, next it’s going to be China. I have the design ready. But I was thinking on my way back home today that CONTACT #2 design could be different. There might be anther way to put the China picture together, like a contact sheet but a different design.

From this experiment, an idea that you had in your mind has actually come into reality. Is it a one-off or do you actually want to do it in continuation?

I want to do it in continuation. Mainly I am going to shoot more stories…

So really, you will be shooting for Contact?

Not exclusively for Contact but if I shoot some story, the story can be a part of Contact.

You still haven’t thought about it?

After China, I have another story in mind that I’d like to put in Contact.

Which one is that?

It’s is not on my website yet; I am not sure but maybe this one.

What is it about?

It is about the life in this place called Lenina in Transnistria. This can be in the very next Contact. I am going to shoot in this May/ June. You can actually see a slide show….

It’s like Moldova and Ukraine.

Oh yes, in between. It’s actually a part of Moldova.

Will Contact always be in b&w?

I am interested in shoot more color too, so may be in color too in the future.

I haven’t seen any of your colour work.

That’s because I shoot color mainly for assignments. Right now, CONTACT will be B&W. The original idea was to do things as I said. It’s not going to be a thick book because of the number of pictures. Like with Colombia, for example, if I put all the pictures of what I have done in Colombia it can be a book as well. ‘Any given day’ was not the only thing I shot there. I was thinking that one day I’d like to do a thicker book on Colombia.

Is there anything else you would want to share with us?

Let’s say, I want to make a thicker book someday with other Colombia stories, but making little publication like this is not only another way to tell the story but also it’s a good beginning to think about what makes this a bit more real. It’s a good experiment as well as the first step toward making a big book. Now I have more ideas for my real book after publishing CONTACT J I learnt a lot from makin CONTACT and it’s really interesting and exciting brain-activity to think about the idea to convey the stories to people.

Get your copy here – CONTACT

Interviewed by Manik Katyal

Photographs by Kosuke Okahara

Photo Credits : Shiv Ahuja

India - 

Emaho caught up with diabolical duo Adil & Vasundhara – Adil Manuel (Guitar) and Vasundhara Vidalur (Vocals), and talked about their musical stronghold and journey through the world of music.

How did the two of you get together?  What were your experiences like as a part of bands, prior to meeting each other? 

The two of us had mutually exclusive worlds – with one of us (Adil) being a live sessions musician and the other (Vasu) being more of a studio person doing jingles and character voices. We had never heard of each other. A common friend who played bass with Artistes Unlimited, the choir that Vasu was part of, connected us.

It was a matter of 10 minutes of playing a song together and we both knew that this was it.

Our skill sets were very different, and by-and-by we assumed different and complementary roles in running the band.
Adil had been part of bands like Silk Route and had played sessions with Shubha Mudgal ji, Shibani Kashayap etc. He knew the entire mechanism behind gigs. He had already done it for a decade.
I was more into the back end stuff, handling funds, doing all the writing work etc.

Photo Credits : Shiv Ahuja

Share with us the moment when the two of you finally said, ‘Yes, this is what Adil & Vasundhara should sound like.’

We never planned what we would sound like. We never wanted to start off with a definition and a box.
There were too many things we loved and there are too many things still left to learn. Our sound would have to evolve with every little change in what we fancied and every new skill we acquired.
Our love for collaboration also necessitates that we leave as much space for those we invite into our space to be themselves. We don’t want definitions to be stumbling blocks.

You are a bi-lingual act; performing songs in French and English…..how did French find its place in your music? 

We both studied French. We love the language. We are rather rusty now and music is the only way French stays part of our lives. We even have a dedicated project called Funkophonie in which we explore French music and poetry and perform it in our own style.

You call your debut album Ampersand, ‘an amalgamation of urban stories in a single version’. Tell us a little about the significance behind the name and the message this record will deliver.

The songs in AMPERSAND are directly about city life, city attitudes, trials and tribulations, city joys … it blends our lived out realities with our fantasies and influences. All our content is autobiographical and includes our comments on the workings and philosophies of a typical Indian city, how it is to be an independent artist — within society and at the margins of a music industry that is still Bolly-dominated.
In terms of the message AMPERSAND wishes to deliver is that we need to embrace that we are hybrid people and hence hybrid musicians. Our Indian-ness is in what we do, what we eat, how we feel, what our spiritual and religious beliefs are, how our families function etc. And yet, for Adil and me, our first language is English and we have grown up listening to, watching, eating and internalizing a mix of all things Indian and non-Indian. The hybridity of our lives reflects clearly in our music. And in doing so, we are being as honest about our ‘roots’ as we could ever be.
Let us not obsess over being more exotic than we actually are.

Photo Credits: Mahima Bhatia

Your debut album featured collaborations with some of the finest musicians in the country like Loy Mendosa, Ranjit Barot and Zubin Balaporia from Indus Creed. What was it like having such acclaimed musicians lending you their harmonies and verses? 

We were humbled.  At first we couldn’t believe that they had been so kind and so supportive. We didn’t know whether to cry or to jump around for joy that the people we had looked up to were actually part of OUR album.
Shantanu Hudlikar had the biggest part to play in this. Songs were sent or played to them and we hoped they would record on them if they felt the songs were good enough. Uncle Louiz was sent Waking Hours and Not Just Another Blues to choose from and he was kind enough to say he would play on BOTH!! We were stunned. Zubin just came in and transformed Creek Funk and Dog days. Sanjay Divecha stunned us all with his wisdom and elegance on the guitar on Dog Days too. Suchet summoned up visuals and landscapes in Refuge and One Winged Goose. We cant forget the morning when Loy came and did his takes. Ranjit Barot created this magnificent beast out of Pinocchio Times. With all their energies, the songs just began to breathe in a different way. There is a lot of kindness and generosity on this album.

What was the experience like playing on The Dewarists?

Phenomenal. We couldn’t have been happier with the collaborators they chose for us. Ashwin Srinivasan and Thermal and a Quarter. Our five days together were insane. Our chemistry was fanstastic. Most of all, a great song was born.
What we take back from an exchange like this is really very precious and the relationships that were forged there have endured and we have played together after the Dewarists as well.

Video Credits: The Devarists

You have played at many different music festivals around the world, in some of which you have been the first act from India to have been invited. How do you think the Indian music industry is warming up to independent musicians like yourself?

It’s an immense eye opener to play festival and venues abroad. There are some differences between how things work there and how they are in India. We also get to hear great bands whom we might not have had access to at home.
Everyone here wants to start a music festival. And the ones that have been around are getting bigger. Organizers and sponsors think very differently from artists. So we are certain that the response and money being generated are great enough for festivals to become the new formula.
Delhi Jazz Festival, that way, is exemplary. It is free. You see everyone from diplomats, artists and musicians to college kids from outside Delhi in the audience. People bring along picnic baskets and the works, but are clued in to the music throughout. It speaks volumes about where the audiences have reached.

Photo Credits: Shiv Ahuja

You are affectionately referred to as the New Jazz & Blues Ambassadors of India. How does it feel having earned that nickname?

Hehe.. heavy.. coz it means that many eyes are fixed on what we do. But it isn’t about us being anything or being called anything. There are a lot of fabulous musicians dedicating themselves to this music and it has got to be about all of us.
For all you know, tomorrow people might lovingly nickname us something really unflattering as well. We just need to be true to what we do.

We heard that your collaboration with the two-member audio-visual project from Delhi, B.L.O.T, has influenced you into experimenting with your own take on EDM. Would you like to tell us more?

Vasu:  I recorded a song on BLOT’s album, SNAFU and did a few gigs with them as well. I was and still am rather clueless about electronic music. However, my association with Funk and even Swing for that matter is what made the connect. EDM has the same role to play today that Funk and early Swing had in their respective eras… to allow people to dance, let loose and forget their worries.
Besides, BLOT’s gesture of reaching across to musicians to perform their stuff live was really very nice.
Our next experiment will focus not on ape-ing EDM on stage but to play the role that it plays within society today in an entirely ‘Adil & Vasundhara’ way.

Photo Credits: Vijay Kate

You got together in 2009 to create a unique sound and have claimed recognition for the same…what would you suggest to other independent artists trying to make their mark in the music scene?

1. There are no short cuts.
2. There are no wrong decisions when you are clear about what you love.
3. There are no rules set in stone for anything in this industry. What works for one band needn’t work for another. So nobody can be an example to anyone else and everyone has his own journey.

You have released an album, played at music festivals around the world and collaborated with acclaimed musicians both within and outside India…..what do you see the future holding for you?

More of the same.  We love traveling and working with different people.
And of course we’ll keep practicing and learning new things along the way…. So whatever we come up with next will have something new in it.

Photo Credits : Vijay Kate

Interviewed by Aditya Varma

England -

Emaho catches up with London – based artist / illustrator Neal Fox who brings together unlikely characters like William Burroughs and Francis Bacon sipping tea together. The macabre, the surreal and the fantastic come together in his work.

There is a certain amount of conscious effort on your part to resurrect grand philosophers and writers like Bacon and William Burroughs in your art. What message do you wish to convey through them?

The Bacon i draw is Bacon the artist rather the philosopher… what seems to tie together mosts of the people in my drawings is that they are iconoclasts and free thinkers, renegades and drinkers. They saw the world through their own unique lens. Maybe what i want to convey is the same as those other philosophers known as Fleetwood Mac; “you can go your own way”.

 

Anatomy of the beast

Anatomy of the Beast

Illustrating is an art hard to master. Could you elaborate the process you go through in creating one illustration?

Usually a line from a book or a song or film will spark and idea in my head that hangs around for a while until it connects with other ideas. Then i start drawing first in pencil and then indian ink. I don’t really know what is going to happen when i start. New images and narratives occur to me my while i’m drawing which get added in. I’m on google a lot. There’s a flood of information which is influenced a lot by the internet.

 

Atrocity

Atrocity

Your grandfather seems to be a great influence in your artwork, figuring in his trademark black hat and a trenchcoat. Could you tell us how he created such an impact on you?

He died when i was young but i always heard stories about him when i was growing up. Its probably what got me interested in storytelling, the way my family mythologized him and the way he lived. His name was John Watson. He was a writer and a bon viveur, a bomber pilot, chats how host and publisher of pulp fiction. He used to write hard boiled detective novels under the pseudonym Nat Karta. I started drawing him as i imagined he had lived, and gradually the drawings became more abstract, with his spirit on a journey through the mythology of pop culture.

 

Boleskine

Boleskine

 

The Beat poets seem to recur in your art constantly especially Bukowski and William Burroughs. How have they become significant to your art?

My dad has always been really into the Beats so growing up the house was full of Beat books. I’m actually named after Neal Cassady, who was the inspiration for Kerouac’s On the Road, and later the driver of Ken Kesey’s magic bus. My dad travelled a lot when he was young and made quite psychedelic artwork about it which made me interested in that lifestyle. I’m into the way the Beats real and imaginative lives fused together, though sometimes it didn’t last like with Kerouac, who became disillusioned. I like to enter the worlds of these different writers and then fuse them together, their imaginations and their real lives.

 

Disneymassacre

Disneymassacre

 

There is an assertion of pop culture but within it, a kind of critiquing it too. What is the larger meaning you want to show?

I”m still trying to work that out myself really… I’m interested in the different levels of reality… of world events and the media landscape, our everyday banal lives, and then then the world inside our heads. Maybe i am trying to make allegorical history paintings, but of our confused media saturated modern history, with these iconoclasts as the heroes moving through the landscape. I like the idea of the carnivalesque, of liberation through humour and chaos, and the artist as Fool.

 

In Search of Yage

In Search of Yage

 

You seem to have co-founded the art magazine Le Gun while you were still at college. How intimately are you involved with it now?

Very much so… we all have studios in the same building, and at the moment we are working on an installation for a show called Memory Palace at the V & A, also an idea for a giant labyrinth of Le Gun, and hopefully a new magazine too.

 

Journey to the end of the night

Journey to the End of the Night

 

There seems to be a lot of prolific and visionary writers who constantly feature in your work like Aldous Huxley, Francis Bacon, not to mention the Beat poets. How much of your reading influences your art?

Its the biggest influence on me, my studio is full of books, my bookshelf collapsed a while ago. I’m a bit all over the place with reading, i dip in and out of a lot of different things. My main influence recently has been J G Ballard, who was a kind of visionary of pop culture and its effect on our psyches… the idea of an over stimulated society having a nervous breakdown. My drawings are all about narratives and mythologies really so i like to hop on the backs of different writers like a drunken monkey and see where they take me.

 

LIttle Drop of Poison

Little Drop of Poison

 

 

Debauchery, grotesque, and iconoclastic are some of the adjectives used to describe your artwork. How would you choose to describe your own work in three words?

Bacchanalian, absurd, saucy.

 

Satan’s Ball

Satan’s Ball

  

Interviewed by Sandhya Das

Art work by  Neal Fox

 

Japan -

James Whitlow Delano is an American photojournalist who has lived in Japan for nearly 20 years. He has been awarded numerous titles including the Alfred Eisenstadt Award (from Columbia University and Life Magazine), Leica’s Oskar Barnack, Picture of the Year International and many others. In Black Tsunami, he takes us through the horror and desolation in the aftermath of the Tohoku tsunami.

Where did you go first to photograph? Did you plan the project Black Tsunami from the start or did it emerge as you photographed?

We cut across the island back to the Pacific Coast at Kamaishi because we had heard that stretch of the coast was particularly hard hit. As we arrived, it was immediately obvious that this had been the case as I almost climbed through the window of the car to get out into the snow and begin photographing a scene like none I had seen before. In 2008, I had documented the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis in Burma but even that paled in comparison to the total destruction brought by the tsunami.

Events were unfolding so quickly and access was not guaranteed. Frankly, I was expecting Japanese police, given my experience with American police forces, to cordon off the whole area. To their credit, police waved us through and the media coverage benefited the relief effort by allowing the world to grasp the magnitude of the event.

So, we were really putting one foot before the other in those early days. What moved me was the Biblical scale of debris in every city. Cars were folded bridge railings like soft drink cans 15 meters or more above the water, logs were impaled through third story windows and some boats were even deposited on rooftops.

Conditions were difficult following the tsunami. How did this affect your work?

We had to plan carefully. First and foremost, we did not want to be taking food or water, figuratively, out of the mouths of survivors. It was necessary to either sleep in relief centers or an hour away, where one could obtain food and water. I was firm in that I did not want to eat survivors’/refugees’ food. If we stayed at relief centers, we would have been forced to do that as our own supplies would have run out.

I often turned down the kind offerings of people at relief centers. They generously offered food to us. I could not accept that.

Gasoline was rationed and gas lines went on for kilometers. People would park their cars in gas lines for the night, go home to sleep and return to them in the morning. So, we decided to hire a taxi that ran on liquid propane gas because that fuel was still plentiful.

Japan Self Defense Forces search several kilometers inland from Otsuchi for victims of the 25 m (82 ft) tsunami that struck the town.  Clothing and a sofa from a demolished house is suspended from the branches of tree.  Iwate Prefecture, Japan. The cold weather that set in right after the tsunami has hampered the relief effort and weighed heavily on the elderly and young children.  Thus far more than 26,000 people are either missing or dead and the death toll has risen to 10,000 souls.

Did you return to the same places you photographed during the year?

Yes, I did return to some of the same places during the year, though I followed where I believe the most important events were unfolding. I did return to Iwate Prefecture again when the cherry blossoms bloomed because of a moment standing in front of a pair of cherry trees.

A tug boat had been carried up and deposited next to them by the tsunami, and a house came to rest right beside them. It was not possible to tell from where the house had come. There were clothes up in the branches of the trees. I was talking to a Japanese photographer friend who told me that her grandmother had described Tokyo looking this way during the firebombing campaigns during the Second World War. I decided right then that I would have to return to that spot when or if the sakura cherry trees came back to life and bloomed. Well, when I returned, the tug boat was still there, the house and one cherry tree had been removed. Still the tree, in front of which she had shared the story, was then in full bloom, having come back to life.

I returned quite a few times to the nuclear no-entry zone, as that part of the story started to eclipse the tsunami story itself, as the situation seemed to get worse and worse, as revelations about the radiation leaked out. By then, I had educated myself on the nature and magnitude of the radiation and found places I was comfortable entering.

I returned again to Iwate in late-January to document the changes over the year. In the process, I found access to the pine forest in Rikuzen-Takata. This was significant because the city had been completely level by the tsunami. The centuries-old Takata Matsubayashi, Takata Pine Forest, of 70,000 trees had been completely wiped out by the tsunami except one tree which survived and became a symbol of hope.

Sadly, the salt water eventually killed that one surviving tree. I walked down to the beach and found that the beach that had been in front of the forest was completely gone. The land had receded almost 1 meter.

Stumps of the pine trees stood but the surf had undercut them so that the roots now projected into the air like the legs of king crabs at the waterline, creating an otherworldly appearance which communicated a stronger message than any words. I suppose that is what I was trying to do throughout my time photographing this multifaceted disaster, to make photographs that spoke stronger than any words could possibly do.

How did you gain access to the Fukushima nuclear power plant and what was your experience there?

I entered the no-entry zone by slipping in unnoticed. Access was denied by threat of fine and imprisonment, but this was a story that just had to be told. The emptiness was chilling. The spring sky and flowers flew in the face of the invisible danger. Apparently, the radiation had no visible affect on the plant life which seems to be growing normally. By summertime, it became clear how tenuous a hold “civilization” on the landscape. Nine months after the disaster, many places look as if they had not been inhabited for a decade, not such a short amount of time.

I would move around in the forest plantations farmers had planted to avoid detection but to be honest, I never encountered a soul in the zone.

Recovery workers, probably police, wearing full-body white suits to protect them from radiation, enter the 20 km (12.4 miles) nuclear no-entry zone in a police bus at the main check point on Route 6, Minami Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.  Recovery workers enter the no-entry zone to search for the bodies of the missing but the danger of radiation exposure has greatly slowed their progress.

Many of these photographs have a haunted emptiness to them. What did you intend to invoke with these landscapes?

I wanted to document the loss of people’s life work in an event that was not of their own making.

I felt I could identify with them. I imagined if every photograph I have made over the past 25 years were destroyed, even that would not be like losing the family farm, perhaps in the same family for hundreds of years. Each family’s roots run deep in this country with such a rich, long history. Most of these farmers were above what would normally be considered retirement age. How are they going to start over. I tried to communicate that with eyes that have lived with Japanese, studied and come to love their culture over the course of 18 years. I approached the story as someone with skin in the game, someone with family here. I approached the story as no idle observer who goes home.Japan has become my home.

Once a great pine forest of 70,000 trees, covered the oceanfront at Takata Matsubara until the 11 March 2011 tsunami swept through decimating them all.  Now the sea  under cuts the roots beneath their stumps, giving them an other worldly appearance.  Rikuzen-Takata, Iwate Prefecture, Japan.

Did you meet anyone in particular or have one unforgettable experience that stand out while working on this project?

I met a man in Otsuchi in the early days. He described what happened to his mother.

The first tsunami came and was not too big. So, because her life savings was in the house, she decided to take a chance and return to the house and save that cash from the flood. He asked her not to go but relented when she insisted so strongly. So, he watched her go into the house from his perch on high ground. He watched the second bigger tsunami destroy the house and never caught a glimpse of his mother again. Her body had not been recovered and likely never would, if it had been swept out to sea.

The man told this story, fighting back tears, as he told us that his adult siblings called him a murderer because he had allow his mother go back to the house where she was killed.

There are times when I think about what I have seen and those who I have met and they remind me of my family and neighbors here. It can momentarily overtake me emotionally but perhaps it would not be human not to experience moments like that coming out of the blue.

An ocean going ship sits where it came to rest in the debris of the great 25m high (82 ft.) tsunami that hit Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture following the massive earthquake that struck under the sea off of Japan.

You refer to the past year as “year zero” for Japan. What do you mean by that?

I feel this was a reset for Japan unlike any since the end of Second World War. It was not a Cambodian Khmer Rouge Year Zero but I felt that the power of that phrase was appropriate to how I felt. Certainly, Japan will never be the same to me.

What do you want your viewers to take from your photographs?

I want viewer to feel like they were there. I want to transmit the energy and I do not want this moment in history to simply be swept away. The feeling of invulnerability that people feel in the industrialize world was felt here too before the tsunami. I want viewers to see themselves and their family members in the photographs, in the sense that they are not looking at the “other”. They are looking at “us”. We all can find ourselves in such situations and we can all gain from watching how the Japanese people have gotten through this time without looting, without riots, but with stoic strength and dignity. Under extreme duress, the people here never cracked.

The book is available at the FotoEvidence bookstore and the iTunes bookstore.

Cherry blossoms have open on a tree that seems to rise right out of the rubble.  Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, Japan.

Interviewed by Svetlana Bachevanova 

Photographs By James Whitlow Delano

England -

You Get Me is a series that has taken four years to complete and addresses the changing identity of young British working class Pakistani men living in Birmingham, while also documenting individuals from Kashmir, Bangladesh, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan. The men I have documented identify themselves through their religion as Muslims, however, my work is not about religion, it is principally concerned with the evolution of British culture.

The work has been made by walking the streets of Birmingham, stopping individuals and engaging with them. Often they would ask me, why them, why were they so interesting, how they did not feel special. My portraits are very straight and centralized, placing emphasis on the sitter and not the artist in order to celebrate the individual. I believe my portraits force a vital interaction between the sitter and viewer.

String vest, two tears © Mahtab Hussain

The desire of these young British Muslims is to be westernized and accepted, however their community is insular and inherently avoids integration with the wider population. Religion is often explained as the cause of the divide, part of which is true. However, several reasons play a role, poverty, social/cultural constraint by families, and a relentless reminder of British colonialism. This has caused a great deal of hopelessness within the community through segregation, racial subordination and failure in education and employment.

Anger held by the community towards wider society has imploded and given rise to internal tensions. Birmingham has seen an increase of Muslim immigration over the last 15 years, with overcrowded living conditions and segregated inner-city streets more akin to the ghettos so prevalent in American cities. This in turn has given rise to territorial postcode wars. Violence is commonplace and suffered by many and the community in Birmingham that was once harmonious is now afraid of itself. In the past it was Muslims against non-Muslims now it is Muslims against Muslims.

The struggle to find a sense of identity and belonging in Britain is fuelled in part by being made to feel shameful of their religion and heritage after the traumatic events of 9/11 and 7/7, combined with daily challenges to the ethics of their religion. Muslims are ridiculed by negative media representation and find it difficult to associate England as their home, as more often than not, they are labelled as ‘the others’. I feel this tension is more prevalent within the British Muslim community because of its strong collective identity. To add to the confusion, these young men, without a strong sense of their own individual identity, attempt to desperately find one and in doing so, latch on to simplistic ideologies the West offers throughout the media.

Man with Japanese Akita © Mahtab Hussain

Furthermore, most of the men in this series were children from the 80’s onwards and were born at a time when Margaret Thatcher’s government was playing out its manifesto of the idea of no society in favour of the individual. The emphasis placed upon the individual in Britain since then, is in direct conflict with these young men’s heritage which firmly roots itself in the concept of a collective society; the West’s loss of sincerity towards community is having a direct impact on their cultural heritage. It is not these young men who are in crisis per se, they are simply a metaphor for the crisis of British society as a whole.

I always thought these men were experiencing a crisis of personal identity, and as a result latched onto Black, American culture in particular. However, I realise that it wasn’t their crisis but an evolution of urban culture, of personal identity, which is occurring in Britain, and indeed, all over the world. I believe that is what my work addresses, and once the viewer realises these profound complexities, the work becomes a very powerful metaphor for addressing the intricacies of Western, multicultural society on a wider level.

Written and photographed by Mahtab Hussain